This is downright silly. you (should) know that when people use the term abiogenesis, they are referring to naturalistic abiogenesis, not supernatural abiogenesis, which is known as Creation.
Would you explain what you mean by this?
Why is it silly? How could we possibly distinguish between natural ABG and Created ABG?
CSI as defined in Dembski (2005) is a very strange thing, which has been much discussed here in previous threads. This might be best summarized in a post by @Joe_Felsenstein on PT a few years back.
TL; DR: Dembski gets a lot of things wrong, but even if he were right there is no practical application of CSI.
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Basically, one sentence of “Nuh-uh”.
Given that short segments of RNA will replicate non-enzymatically via template-directed polymerization, joining of random fragments is exactly what is needed.
Here, we show that 2′–5′ linkages can destabilize long RNA duplexes to the point that thermal strand separation could occur under reasonable geophysical conditions.
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The question comes down to how information is measured. It is not clear to me that the information needed to describe the system must be treated as the information in the system. The description becomes simpler because we have gained information about the system - that does not sound like a loss to me.
Sure. I’d start by acknowledging @Dan_Eastwood’s post, especially the point that “CSI as defined in Dembski (2005) is a very strange thing”, and that what follows may be convoluted (even strange). Be that as it may, this is what ID theory returns to.
That being said, I should give my own very brief synopsis of CSI. In my post above (“if by information you mean Complex Specified Information as defined by Dembski”), I am speaking mainly about the propensity to think in terms of proteins and amino acid sequences. In this parlance, the quantity of specified information relates to the fraction of functional sequences in sequence space (sum of active sequences/sum of all possible sequences). A quantity of specified information in considered complex if (roughly speaking - there is more, I acknowledge, but the details aren’t so important for my assertion) this fraction is less than 1 in 10^150. In other words, there is (again, very roughly speaking) a probabilistic line in the sand defined by the value 1/10^150.
Many lines of evidence (direct measurement, consideration of randomly-occurring instances of new proteins arising) indicate that, when it comes to protein function, the fraction of functional sequences in sequence space comes nowhere close to this line in the sand. Thus, by my way of thinking, if there are no specifications that satisfy this criterion, then there must be no CSI - zero CSI - in the biosphere.
So, to summarize briefly, when it comes to CSI, I am referring to this magic value (1/10^150). Less than this = CSI. greater than this = Zero CSI.
(Let’s not fall into a discussion about how useful Dembski’s original notion of CSI is, or how things may have evolved, or other related subjects. These have nothing to do with my assertion, which is all I care to follow through on.)
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A wise choice. My own arguments are summarized here, and I have links to much longer responses by Elsberry and Shallit (2011) and Devine (2014).
If needed, I will split further discussion along these lines into a new topic.
It’s amazing how often people trip over what they don’t know they don’t know.
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The problem goes way beyond that video. It’s a general problem with the Discovery Institute, and James Tour in particular, who seem to think that if they can just criticize the RNA world hypothesis then their work is basically done.
And then they state that he’s downplaying the problems(ignoring what he actually says in his “downplaying” them). And then do no work to show how people in the field are working to solve them. The fact that they bring up the problems without doing any work to show how people in the field are working to solve them is basically to characterize the field as ignoring the problems or are unaware that they exist.
That would be your response. You have offered nothing to counter my statement.
Characterizing the evolving molecules as “malignant” and “devolving” is simply jargon of no value or consequence. Neither of those are meaningful scientific criticisms. Nothing is entailed about evolution by these meaningless subjective characterizations.
A sequence replicating faster isn’t “useless” either. It’s a functional response to selection employed by many actual organisms(and viruses) to survive in their niche. Things don’t have to always and only ever become ever larger and more complex to qualify as evolution.
And the point still stands, selection only for replication speed (which doesn’t actually make it “spiral towards uselessness and malignancy”), but neglecting survival and complex environmental interactions, doesn’t really tell you that there are no conditions under which evolution can favor increases in size and complexity.
I’m sorry but I missed the part of the paper where they attempted to replicate the RNA and found that it was “not available” and was “being protected from replication”. Could you show where in the paper you found this result?
In any case, even if it was true that the RNA temporarily bound to the surface was at that point not available for replication, the idea is that such an effect would be temporary. You understand that adsorption is depending on conditions such as temperature, pH, concentrations of ions and so on, so for example near a hydrothermal pool that goes through fluctuations in these conditions, adsorption on minerals can fluctuate up and down? It’s those damned environmental cycles again.
In the experiment with the recombinase ribozyme (the Azoarcus ribozyme) the shorter RNA fragments are the recombinase ribozyme. It can literally self-assemble through base-pairing among fragments, and this initially non-covalent assembly can then function as a ribozyme recombinase that can catalyze the covalent assembly of more ribozymes from other fragments. They demonstrate that when the fragments are incubated with minerals, they can nevertheless self-assemble into a functional ribozyme that then covalently assembles other active ribozymes from the fragments, and these longer assembled ribozymes can then be adsorbed on the mineral surface.
This is functionally and conceptually closer to a self-replicator than Spiegelman’s system is. The Ribozyme can self-assemble from fragments, and then function as a catalyst for the assembly of more such ribozymes from other fragments.
Actually Spiegelman’s monster is just the piece of RNA being replicated by the RNA polymerase enzyme. In Spiegelman’s experiment they also supplied the enzyme and the RNA being replicated. But putting that aside, that’s completely irrelevant to the point that there are factors that incur length-selection, rather than the opposite.
That isn’t clear at all. Recombination is in fact recognized as a strong evolutionary mechanism, in addition to indels and substitution mutations, for exploration of sequence space and finding novel adaptive variants. It’s why viruses employ recombination in evolution of their proteins, and such evolutionary mechanisms as random joining together of fragments has been shown to result in novel functional molecular complexes, such as irreducibly complex membrane transporters(T-URF13).
The Azoarcus ribozyme system is rather “willy-nilly” (about 17% of products result in it’s own formation, in addition to other random products) in it’s joining together of fragments, but that nevertheless functions well enough for self-assembly to occur, and these in turn can then function as recombinase ribozymes too.
No, I’m not misrepresenting the paper. The paper discusses a solution to this problem offered by the heterogeneous backbone chemistry of 2’-5’ and 3’-5’ linked RNA polymers, where some have backbones that allow replication because they have lower melting temperature, and others with fewer 2’-5’ linkages are capable of folding and catalysis.
Since a sequence being copied many times with a random distribution of backbone linkages, is likely to produce a mix of such products such that some have very few or none, while others have numerous such linkages, this has the effect that one template can effectively still produce sequences that are available as templates, and sequences that can stably fold into catalytic RNAs.
Did you even read the paper?
Who gives a crap that it mysteriously appears somewhere in a footnote for half a second in tiny text form without it’s results or their implications being anywhere discussed?
Yes, that’s an advantage. If it was heritable it would not allow the replicated template to produce a mix of products such that some are available for further templating while others act as catalysts catalytic. The whole point here is that because replication results in a host of products the same sequence can act as both “genotype” and “phenotype”.
I recommend engaging your brain and being reading for comprehension, rather than to peruse papers in this strange apologetics-mode state of thought you all seem incapable of escaping.
Great. Then that is you and Tour making a counterfactual assertion. The 2’-5’ linkages can be replicated. Which you would have known if you had actually read the paper:
The presence of 2′–5′ linkages is not a barrier to subsequent rounds of replication, since Switzer and colleagues have demonstrated that 2′–5′ linked RNA, as well as mixed 2′–5′/3′–5′ RNA, can template primer extension reactions, albeit more slowly than 3′–5′ RNA29.
Works: Not gummed up.
So I’m not misrepresenting Tour. He’s demonstrably an ignoramus about the field of origin of life research, painfully ignorant about molecular biology and evolution more generally, and an overall embarrassment to putatively intellectual Christians.
And your post reads like someone who gets all their science information by being trained by religious apologists like Tour.
It is completely irrelevant which functions ribozymes presently perform in extant life, to the question of how many functions they could perform at the origin of the RNA world. As today most functions are performed by protein enzymes, which doesn’t actually tell us that RNA ribozymes couldn’t also perform them.
But more importantly to my point, the video ASSERTS WITHOUT ACTUALLY KNOWING WHETHER IT IS TRUE, that RNA could not perform all the functions it would be “required” to perform, at the origin of life. One problem with that statement is they do not actually know how many functions it would be required to perform, so it is logically inescapable that they can’t actually claim to know, then, that RNA couldn’t perform those functions. Obviously.
I take it you asking that question concedes that point.
Yes they are supposed problems, because nobody has shown that these problems can’t be overcome. And the video does no work to show that they can’t. It basically just lists them.
Yes, disregarding. Showing a picture of a paper doesn’t, in fact, deal with it’s contents. Does it? No. THINK.
Wow it links it? You mean the citation text flashes on screen for about a second and then the video just moves on without discussing it’s contents? Wow. I mean, just wow. How can the field of abiogenesis research proceed under this cataclysmic bombardment of facts and logic?
Then I’m afraid your reading comprehension skills leave much to be desired.
I suggest you begin by just re-reading it again. The video creates a strawman out of what these papers are presented as “proof of concept of”. They claim these papers are presented as “proof of concept of the origin of life”. That is a lie.
Then having lied, they present the lie as a target to knock down (a straw-man). Because by claiming the research is being presented as something much more grandiose than it actually is, can they then pretend to have levied much more damning criticisms of the entire field, than they actually have.
If we pretend research A is presented as proving a huge claim C, and we show how A doesn’t actually prove C, then we can pretend claim C is rather hopeless and that research A is all exaggeration.
Does that parse meaningfully into English? Do I need to break it down sentence by sentence, word for word?
He thinks they’re challenges the be overcome, yes. Problems for researchers to solve. Nobody is saying they’re not. And there are people actively working to solve them.
Your crap video is designed to leave the impression that these problems are insurmountable and are basically circumvented by researchers exaggerating the results of their experiments without actually solving the problems.
It’s a beautiful and articulate statement of fact. The video belongs in a trashcan. It is both stupid and misleading(as evidenced by the fact that people who like it get dumber and more misinformed by having watched it, I mean we can just read your post for a de facto demonstration), and it has in fact wasted Vincent’s time.
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4 posts were merged into an existing topic: The Argument Clinic
True dat.
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One situation in which it would be possible: A god appears here on earth before a large number of witnesses, and magically poofs a complex organism into existence out of thin air.
IMHO, the main reason it is so difficult to conceive of evidence that would support created ABG under present circumstances is that present circumstances are ones in which created ABG never happened.
Setting Slow Mode until Wednesday morning. Might be some topic splits too. Apologies for the inconvenience.
No, it’s an obfuscation. When people use the term “rain,” are they using it in the Biblical sense as something that God brings (mentioned very often), the naturalistic sense, or both?
It’s also a big difference from evolution. Evolution is not mentioned in the Bible, but abiogenesis is.
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Utterly false. This is another very deliberate IDcreationist misrepresentation–that science is nothing more than retrospective inference. This was predicted by the hypothesis, not inferred.
Still, you’re not even attempting to justify the lies they tell about this objective fact. Why?
Let’s address the big lie about the function first.
I don’t see how that justifies the lie either.
I would love to hear how you think that having a ribozyme at the center of protein synthesis was designed. That was my subject.
Yes, as it was a clear empirical prediction of the hypothesis. That’s how real science generally works. However, no ID proponent has ever presented or tested an ID hypothesis, with one possible exception that’s wrong anyway.
I first heard this God and the big rock in grade 5 or 6 from one of my schoolmates. It seems likely that he was being ‘schooled’ by some atheist in his life.
I’d warn that care should be taken before your, “And yet, that’s not one of them.”
So your Dad can lift 200 pounds over his head. My Dad can’t.
So your Dad has demonstrated abilities that mine does not have.
Has my Dad demonstrated abilities that yours does not have?
Apparently, yes. My Dad has the ability to not be able to lift 200 pounds over his head.
Sounds like sophistry to me.
A bit of C.S. Lewis may be helpful, whether or not you believe in God, His words follow,
Omnipotence means “power to do all, or everything”. And we are told in Scripture that “with God all things are possible”. It is common enough in argument with an unbeliever, to be told that God, if He existed and were good, would do this or that; and then, if we point out that the proposed action is impossible, to be met with the retort, “but I thought God was supposed to be able to do anything”. This raises the whole question of impossibility. In ordinary usage the word impossible generally implies a suppressed clause beginning with the word unless. Thus it is impossible for me to see the street from where I sit writing at this moment; that is, it is impossible to see the street unless I go up to the top floor where I shall be high enough to overlook the intervening building. If I had broken my leg I should say “but it is impossible to go up to the top floor” — meaning, however, that it is impossible unless some friends turn up who will carry me. Now let us advance to a different plane of impossibility, by saying ‘It is, at any rate, impossible to see the street so long as I remain where I am and the intervening building remains where it is.’ Someone might add ‘unless the nature of space, or of vision, were different from what it is’. I do not know what the best philosophers and scientists would say to this, but I should have to reply ‘I don’t know whether space and vision could possibly have been of such a nature as you suggest’. Now it is clear that the words could possibly here refer to some absolute kind of possibility or impossibility which is different from the relative possibilities and impossibilities we have been considering. I cannot say whether seeing round corners is, in this new sense, possible or not, because I do not know whether it is self-contradictory or not. But I know very well that if it is self-contradictory it is absolutely impossible. The absolutely impossible may also be called the intrinsically impossible because it carries its impossibility within itself, instead of borrowing it from other impossibilities which in their turn depend upon others. It has no unless clause attached to it. It is impossible under all conditions and in all worlds and for all agents.
‘All agents’ here includes God Himself. His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say ‘God can give a creature free-will and at the same time withhold free-will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can’. It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.
It should, however, be remembered that human reasoners often make mistakes, either by arguing from false data or by inadvertence in the argument itself. We may thus come to think things possible which are really impossible, and vice versa. We ought, therefore, to use great caution in defining those intrinsic impossibilities which even Omnipotence cannot perform.
I’m pretty sure we could fill a stadium with paying spectators if you will guarantee to “make a rock”.
It’s silly because the argument isn’t about whether or not life began from non-life, it’s about how life began. No-one who uses the word abiogenesis is referring to a supernatural origin.
No one? I just did! Life from non-life, that’s what it means.
Again, how could we possibly distinguish between natural ABG and supernatural ABG when the results are identical?
What we really have here is two different questions; one is about biochemistry, and the other is about the Divine creation of man. There is no need for these to conflict.
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The point is, that any resulting RNA that folds and has some sort of function is unlikely to be replicated. It negates natural selection.
You’re making the same mistake. There are two separate issues. The first is the high melting temperature of the RNA duplex (which is unfolded). The second is that a folded RNA isn’t useful for non-enzymatic replication.
Your quote from the paper deals with the first issue, but the paper does not say that the 2’-5’ linkages will unfold a folded RNA. The paper actually confirms that a folded RNA will make for a poor template for replication.
From the paper:
Some copies might, by chance, contain most or all 2′–5′ linkages in positions with minimal effects on, e.g., ribozyme function. As well-folded structures, however, these copies would be poor templates for subsequent rounds of replication. Other copies would have some 2′–5′ linkages at positions that interfered with the formation of well folded structures, and these copies would be poor ribozymes but much better replication templates. Thus, the generation of 2′–5′ vs. 3′–5′ linkage heterogeneity could result in the formation of a heterogeneous set of copies of every sequence in a protocell, with some being better for function (phenotype) and others being better for replication (genotype).